Marginalizaton of Pop

An English professor ponders popular music:

The fate of hip-hop may be the best illustration of the increasing marginalization of popular music and its impact on American culture. Hip-hop is arguably the last great innovation in popular music, the successor to ragtime, jazz, rhythm and blues, and rock 'n' roll. All of those forms emerged out of African-American culture and changed the tastes of Americans of all races. Hip-hop also attracted a large audience of young white listeners, but it did not come to dominate public consciousness the way its predecessors had. That has less to do with the particular qualities of hip-hop than with the fragmentation of the market. Most Americans didn't hear the music routinely, so it remained foreign to their ears.

Early hip-hop stars like Grandmaster Flash and Public Enemy were at least as critical of American society as Dylan ever was, and they led some commentators to imagine hip-hop artists as authentic and politically significant spokespeople for poor, urban African-Americans. But in the last 10 years or so, even though hip-hop artists like Jay-Z are popular music's most innovative contributors, the form has become less political, and its performers seem less culturally central.

In a different, more unified market, hip-hop stars might have become leaders like James Brown. As it is, popular music seems headed back to the margins of cultural life, and that is a loss for all of us.

Instead of the CNN of the inner city, rap gave into the same self-indulgent excesses of 70s and 80s metal and hair bands (self-mythologizing violence and misogyny). Instead of Dylan and James Brown, we've gotten Poison and Ratt with a beat. Indie rock on the other hand is a boutique musical form like Jazz was in the 60s and 70s. Ambitious, distant, unconcerned. Big music for small crowds. Micro-stars for a micro-culture. For now, I'm all right with that.